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The Grammar of Spoken English
Dr Seetha Jayaraman
Dhofar University
Salalah, Sultanate of Oman
Abstract
Grammar has been broadly defined as the rules of a language. The term ‘grammar’ is derived from the classical
Greek word for writing and is often related to written language, viz., dealing with words, phrases, clauses and
sentences, both at morphological and syntactical levels. It implies the structure and typology of language, which are
language specific. From the point of view of pedagogy, grammar and Language Teaching go hand in hand,
regardless of the approach to teaching or learning adopted. The basic function of a language is ‘communication’
and begins at the spoken level. What is important to understand in language learning is the primacy of Spoken
Language over Written Language. Over-generalizing or overemphasizing of grammar of a language undermines the
role of pronunciation and the impact of phonetic and phonological factors on Language Teaching/Learning, with
special reference to ESL and EFL. Grammar of Spoken English exhibits far more diversity than Written English.
The study analyses the grammar of Spoken English along its phonetic and phonological features, stress, rhythm and
intonation. The focus of the investigation is on the importance of grammar in Spoken English, and the perceptual
clues to the grammar of Written Language at the levels of phoneme and morpheme on the one hand and at the
lexical and syntactic levels, on the other. Collectively, these features make the grammar of a language in its spoken
form.
Key words: Phonetic features, phonological factors, phonemes, stress, intonation.
Introduction
The question whether there is grammar in Spoken English is undisputable, following the definition of grammar as
“the rules governing the language”, including both the spoken and the written forms. Speakers can shorten, lengthen,
stress, or alter any speech sound at his will, to render it as meaningful and emotive as he desires. In fact, the
unspoken words and the sounds beyond the individual sound segments of language are more meaningful than the
spoken words. With the result, extra-linguistic factors are more efficacious in terms of their communicative value. In
this sense, spoken language is considered as consisting of essential rules of grammar in the form of articulatory and
their acoustic features, which perform extra-linguistic functions in language. A knowledge of acoustic phonetic
features of speech segments (vowels and consonants) supra-segmental or prosodic features such as duration, stress,
pitch, juncture, rhythm and other speaker identifying (indexical) features are particularly useful in studying the
meaning and the functions of words in isolation and those in connected speech.
When we consider a detailed descriptive and a systematic analysis of language in its spoken form, we find that there
are as many number of rules that govern the spoken variety, as there are, governing the written variety. The diversity
that exists in ‘Spoken language’ is so vast and varied that we need to look at every segment, pattern and structure
that is uttered by the speakers. This diversity can occur at the phoneme level (or allophones), morphemes (or
allomorphs), syllables, words (minimal pairs), between and beyond the syllable boundaries, between and beyond the
word boundaries or within and beyond tone groups or sentence levels.
Sociolinguists have shown diversity in language through social and ethnic factors like gender, race, social status,
ethnicity, region or language use (as registral, dialectal or similar varieties). Variety within the speakers can involve
idiosyncratic features, which help to identify the speakers and distinguish individual speakers from one another.
Analyzing a language in all the dimensions is useful and effective in arriving at a complete account of how language
operates (in a given domain).
Phonemes, morphemes and words
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Individual speech sounds are identified with reference to their production, transmission and reception. Their
description depends on “the airstream mechanism, the action of the vocal folds, the position of soft palate, place of
articulation, manner of articulation and the position of lips” (David Crystal, 1997). While the precise description of
these sound segments is done and transcribed by earlier studies (Jones, 1950; Gimson, 1962 and Ladefoged, 1993),
the exact number of consonant and vowel phonemes is language specific. When the place and manner of articulation
of these sound units differ, there is a variation in the sound produced. When a sound or a set of sounds do not occur
in a position in a syllable, or a word, which results in variation at the phoneme and syllable levels. If the set of
sounds are not familiar to the speakers, then there is a difficulty in the articulation of these sounds. Examples that we
often come across are the English vowels and the consonant sounds ‘sh’ /ʃ/ and ‘zh’ /ʒ/, as in the English words
fissure and vision respectively. Similarly, the distinction between cot and caught is lost. The diphthongs also pose
problems with some speakers. But the rule that delimits and specifies a few sounds to certain position in the word
pose problems, which can be called the ‘first rule of Spoken grammar’, substituting the corresponding allophones.
These speech sounds in English are classified as vowels and consonants, and they are described along their phonetic
and phonological features.
At the morpheme level, word stress plays an important role in imparting semantic value and the characteristic
rhythm to English words. Phonetically, addition of affixes changes the pronunciation of the word and shifts the
stress within a word from one syllable to another. As a rule of written grammar, addition of a morpheme (i.e., a
prefix or a suffix) changes the word class, while the rule of spoken language assigns stress pattern and applies stress
shift as in the words: ‘grammar-gram’matical-gramma’tically, and punctuates the word. The plural morpheme and
tense markers add more distinctiveness to the words by varying the rules of pronunciation to demarcate the present
tense from the past tense and the singular from the plural morpheme, with the addition of a morpheme. A
phonological rule that applies to the realization of the surface form of the word, where the pronunciation rule as in
the English words rose and roses, match and matches manifest themselves in the spoken form, as also in the written
form. Word stress further appears in contrastive pairs to show the opposition between a noun and verb as in
‘object(N) and ob’ject(V) through stress placement. This further confirms the existence of a grammatical rule in
pronunciation, in addition to the grammar rule in written form, which is explicit in stress placement in English
isolated words.
Hudson (1996) opines that variations in language arise out of phonetic or phonological variation, as “pronunciation
variables”. These variables arise out of mispronouncing sound phonemes or phoneme combinations. In fact, the
word is one of the points at which grammar and phonology meet. Grammatically, words can be regarded as the units
which enter into syntactic constructions, and which are made up of morphemes (roots, prefixes and suffixes)
combined according to the rules of inflectional and derivational morphology. Phonologically, words can be
characterized as the minimal forms which can be pronounced in isolation as in the words ‘beauty-‘beautiful‘beautifully.
Across word boundaries
In connected speech some phonemic changes occur at word boundaries, where individual phonemes are greatly
reduced, elided, assimilated or continued into the following sound. The common examples of compressed sounds
are weak forms of structure words such as prepositions, conjunctions and articles (of reduced to /ǝv/; and reduced
/n/, to reduced to /tǝ/). Certain consonants are modified or varied in accordance with the adjacent sound phonemes.
Among these can be mentioned voiced/voiceless variation of consonants (eg: /t/ and /d/), length variation of vowel
phonemes (/u/ and /u:/ as in the words foot and food,), nasalization of the neighbouring vowel phonemes (as in king,
with /i/ nasalized being preceded by a nasal consonant) and so on.
An interesting feature of speech as opposed to writing is the use of ‘pauses’ and ‘hesitations’ as extra-linguistic
features, which contribute to punctuation of speech. Pauses are referred to as “silent breaks in the speech signal”
(Asher, 1994), and can be in the form of silence, stutter, exclamations, a grunt or even a sigh, which is perceived as
punctuation of the kind a comma, an exclamation or a suspension mark in written form. Generally, pauses as are
interpreted as a difficulty in the productive or communicative ability of the speaker. When pauses and hesitations
occur in speech, they are indicative of an interruption or an intentional break in speech, particularly across word
boundaries, such as, eh, ah, well, actually, in fact and so on. Some speakers have a tendency to use these fillers very
frequently in their speech. Mahl (1956) uses the term ‘speech disruption’ to refer to the phenomenon of filling
pauses and hesitation in speech with such expressions. Acoustically these pauses can be measured across word
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boundaries as ‘duration’ between two consecutive syllables (i.e., between the coda of the last syllable of a word and
the onset of the first syllable of the following word. Goldman-Eisler (1968) analyzed pauses and hesitations and
suggested that pauses indicate an articulatory process in speech when they are short.
Trager and Bloch (1941) opined that a few features of pronunciation occur either at the beginning of an utterance, or
intermittently. A typical example is the time gap between words uttered in a sequence. While discussing the duration
of silence or the pauses which occur across word boundaries, we need to consider another important feature,
‘juncture’, which plays a predominant rule in adding or modifying the semantic value of the words. Junctures can
occur through a conscious effort or unconsciously, depending on the intent of the speaker. The length of vowel
phonemes contributes greatly to the meaning across word boundaries, affecting intelligibility of the utterance. Let us
consider the following examples:
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(a) Ice ‘cream
(a) A name
(a) Peace ‘talks
(a) Il’legal
(b) ‘I scream
(b) An aim
(b) ‘pea stalks
(b) ‘ill eagle
The juncture between the two elements in examples (1) and (2) determine the meaning. Also the length of the vowel
as pronounced, either as a long vowel or a diphthong (in ex.(2)) makes the meaning explicit. Thus, where the written
language would explain the two phrases as ‘article+noun’, the open juncture between a and name or between an and
aime as in (2), would be explained phonologically as a syllable boundary, with the syllable composition cvc as the
second element in (2a). The structure of the words an aim continues to be described as ‘article+noun’ in the written
form, while spoken grammar would make it distinct from (2b) as an ‘open juncture’ between the two syllables, and
the structure c.cvc in (2a) and cv.vc (2b)respectively. Thus, there is a shift of the consonant phoneme to the adjacent
syllable, making the juncture either ‘close’ or ‘open’.
Beyond words, phrases
Pike (1947) claims that junctures occur in many languages, and they can be associated with their morphological
boundaries. The feature is best explained both in terms of morpho-phonology as well as the rules of grammar of a
language. Continuing the discussion on juncture in spoken language, juncture in English can occur morphophonemically between a noun and a ‘verb+suffix’, to enable identifying the presence of a morphological element
i.e., a morpheme at the end of the lexical item.
From the acoustic phonetic point of view, quantity adjustment is an important aspect of speech commonly effected
through lengthening or shortening vowels. The long/short opposition of individual vowel and consonant phonemes
forming the phoneme inventory characterizing a language or which occur beyond word boundaries affect the
linguistic meaning of an utterance largely. This is also referred to as ‘phonemic length’. For example, let us consider
the minimal pairs bit and beat. The vowels in the two words differ both qualitatively and quantitatively. In other
words, the two words are phonetically different, explained in terms of long/short vowel contrast. This difference in
length also brings about a contrast in meaning. Phonologically, both are monosyllabic, closed syllables and the
syllable structure is almost similar i.e., cvc (lax vowel)/cv:c (tense vowel) respectively, where the vowel in the latter
is long. It is a phonemic feature, which brings about a change in meaning when one is substituted for another.
Length is a contrastive feature in many Indian languages.
On the other hand, long consonants within a word or at syllable boundaries are common in many Indian languages,
where double consonants (long consonants or geminate consonants) are contrastive. In English, for example, the /p/
in word support is not a double consonant phonetically, as compared to book-case and mis-spelt and un-necessary
and innate. Various theories exist, which argue that long consonants result from two consonants clustering together
and assimilating. Phonologically geminate consonants or long consonants can occur word medially, across syllable
boundaries and or across word boundaries in English. In this case, the morpho-phonological changes that occur lead
to either stress shift or assimilation of a phoneme. In English, geminates are considerably reduced in length within
the words, more often than across word boundaries. This phenomenon, when it occurs in written form is explained
grammatically in terms of doubling of consonants as in begin-ning and il-logical and so on.
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Hudson (1996) refers to variables in sounds and words which lead to coining new words as code-mixing, which is
very common with multilingual speakers. “You know!.....” This is a common expression which marks a tendency on
the part of the speaker to code switch from English to Hindi or his Mother Tongue most often, which is observed
widely among Indian speakers of English. This can be accounted either for the social or due to the lexical limitations
of the speakers. It can also arise due to the speakers’ comfort level with the expressions, with his peers. The example
often cited in this case is “hã” (yes) with a nasal vowel, and with no real lexical or semantic value in speech. A
similar example is “acha!”(really!), with varying intonation patterns. The grammatical function of this expression in
speech would be to accord the spoken utterance at the end of a sentence, phrase or a clause, a confirmation, an
agreement or a verification of what is said, or at times, an exclamation showing surprise.
Clauses and sentences
One of the most prominent features of English language is its rhythm and intonation. Being a stress-timed language,
apart from the word stress, sentence stress imparts a characteristic rhythm to English. Each utterance is phonetically
divided into tone groups and, a tone group corresponds roughly to a clause or a sentence. Each tone group consists
of a ‘tonic syllable’ which is the most prominent syllable in the tone group. The pitch of the utterances varies from
‘high’, ‘mid’ to ‘low’, which is speaker dependent and language dependent. Many languages make use of pitch
variation which conveys lexical information with regard to the meaning of a word (eg: Chinese, Thai). Such
languages, where the tone of voice conveys meaning are called ‘tone languages’. Extensive research has been
carried out on pitch variation in difference languages (Ladefoged, 1993; Halliday,1967). The acoustic correlate of
pitch is Fundamental frequency (Fo) which is measured in Hz. Fo is closely related to the grammatical and lexical
functions of the utterance as a whole and to the functions of voicing of consonants(Lehiste, 1970), in particular and
duration (Abramson, 1962). For instance, Fo is reported to be higher after voiceless consonants than after voiced
consonants at vowel onset. Fo contour generally falls after vowel consonants, and rises after voiced consonants.
Likewise, tones with rising Fo have longer durations than tones with falling Fo (Gandour, 1978, Maddieson, 1978).
Vowels have an intrinsic Fo, depending on their height: high vowels have a higher Fo than low vowels (Lehiste,
1970, Ohala, 1978).
The discussion on Fundamental frequency, tones and tone group boundaries brings us to the aspect of ‘intonation’.
Intonation refers to the patterns of Fo changes that extend over a phrase or a sentence. All languages, including tone
languages make use of intonation to convey lexical meaning and extra-linguistic information. Intonation and other
acoustic features of language perform a variety of different functions like emotional, grammatical, informational,
textual, psychological and indexical.All the grammatical categories of written sentences are related to pitch changes
or intonation pattern both in articulatory and acoustic terms. Although it cannot be generalized, intonation can be
correlated grammatically to sentence types. For example, rising intonation coincides with interrogatives (Whquestions, yes-no questions), falling intonation can be indicative of declarative sentences or imperative sentences
(statements, commands), fall-rise, to express doubts and, a rise-fall shows an incomplete sentence. But a level-tone
normally shows an emphatic attitude of the speaker (impersonal or neutral attitude). As we can see, studies on
speech perception have observed that the most important acoustic correlate of lexical tone is Fo, and tones and
intonation contours are used in a variety of ways, which mark grammatical distinctions. Other factors which the
speaker employs to convey grammatical meaning are voice quality and the speed of utterances. Thus, the fluctuation
of pitch and voice in speech affects the whole spoken discourse.
Conclusion
The study shows that grammar is an integral of part language, in any form and it cannot be dissociated either from
the spoken form of communication in any language, and in English in particular. A detailed articulatory description
of individual phonemes in isolation and in connected speech is essential to establish the intricacies of the correlation
that exists between Spoken language and the rules of grammar governing the language, as illustrated by Ladefoged
(1970), Ohala, (1996), Stevens and House (1955) to name a few, and several others, supported through empirical
studies using acoustic parameters of pitch, duration and amplitude.
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